All children must be injected with dozens of
vaccines before entering school or daycare, and some of these injections
are given to infants within the first weeks or even hours of birth. Parents
are led to believe that these injections are required. Who mandated these
vaccines and what is the decision-making process?

Parents are excluded from the process of deciding
what drugs are injected into their children's bodies. Most states allow
a limited medical exemption and a religious exemption, and a few states
allow a philosophical (or conscientiously held belief) exemption. But often
great pressure is exerted on parents who try to use these exemptions, and
about 98% of all children are vaccinated.

Since more vaccines are coming on the market
every year and more are being mandated, it's time to ask and answer several
questions about forced medical care of healthy children.
(1) Do we want government to have the power to force medical treatment
on children against their parents wishes?
(2) Is the process that produces these mandates honest -- scientifically,
bureaucratically, legislatively, politically -- and open to public scrutiny
and peer review?

It's important to recognize that the government
is using popular support for vaccines to subsidize states to set up vaccine
registries to tag all children at birth and track their medical records
all their lives, and the CDC is working to merge these registries into
a national medical database. When completed, this will achieve one of the
principal goals of the discredited Clinton health care plan: computerizing
the health records of all Americans with unique personal identifiers (Social
Security numbers, if possible).

Vaccine mandates go into effect in America
in an intricate three-step procedure that evades accountability. First,
the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its Vaccines and Related Biological
Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) decide whether a vaccine can be licensed.
Second, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and its Advisory Committee
on Immunization Practices (ACIP) decide whether to include the vaccine
on the Child Immunization Schedule, i.e., put on the list of vaccines that
are recommended to be given to all children. Third, state legislatures
specify which vaccines and how many doses are required (or authorize a
state health agency to put new vaccines on the compulsory list). State
legislatures or agencies usually follow ACIP's recommendations.

It is obvious that the FDA/ACIP/state decisions
make the approved vaccines immensely profitable by providing a guaranteed
market. Federal laws are supposed to prohibit conflicts of interest, but
commercial conflicts have emerged as a major concern.

Conflicts of Interest about Vaccines

When a rotavirus (infant diarrhea) vaccine was suddenly withdrawn from
the market in 1999, the public was led to believe that it was because new
information about harmful side effects had been discovered. At a June 15,
2000 hearing conducted by Rep. Dan Burton's (R-IN) House Committee on Government
Reform, we learned that other factors influenced the 1998 FDA licensing
and CDC recommendation. Most of the work of the CDC advisory committee
is done in "working groups" behind closed doors without public scrutiny.
Six of the ten working groups had financial ties to pharmaceuticals that
make rotavirus vaccines. It turns out that half of those on the two key
committees voting for the rotavirus vaccine had financial ties to vaccine
manufacturers, such as being paid as consultants or lobbyists or owning
vaccine patents or owning stock in pharmaceuticals.

In pre-licensure trials for the rotavirus vaccine,
some babies suffered obstructed bowels a week later, some requiring surgery
to remove a portion of the intestine, a painful condition called intussusception.
Nevertheless, the committees approved the vaccine for universal use, calling
these reports statistically insignificant. The study data were concealed,
and the public did not learn of the problem until more than 100 cases of
intussusception were reported, including one death.

The vaccine was not even considered to be all
that effective in preventing diarrhea in infants. In one U.S. multicenter
trial, the rotavirus vaccine only had a 49% efficacy rate in preventing
the rotavirus disease. Within months after government approval, 1.5 million
vaccine doses were given to infants. The Department of Health and Human
Services, in its announcement, stated that "the most common adverse vaccine
reactions included moderate fever, increased irritability, and decreased
appetite and activity," with no mention of side effects requiring hospitalization
or surgery.

The Burton hearings provided some answers to
help explain this disaster. When the rotavirus vaccine was approved by
the FDA committee, 8 members were absent, 2 were excluded, and 4 of the
remaining 5 had conflicts of interest that necessitated waivers. This was
not a quorum so they were joined by 5 temporary members, and then all voted
to approve the vaccine. The committee's own charter states that temporary
members are normally not to exceed 4.

The CDC routinely grants conflict-of-interest
waivers to every member of its advisory committee a year at a time, and
allows full participation in the discussions by all members even if they
have a financial stake in the decision. One member who cast three votes
to recommend the rotavirus vaccine owned a patent for another rotavirus
vaccine and admitted that he was paid by the pharmaceutical industry to
travel around the country and teach doctors that vaccines are safe.

The public still has no access to the actual
data concerning side effects of the rotavirus vaccine or of the controversial
chicken pox or hepatitis B vaccines. If these new vaccines are safe, there
should be no objection to releasing the actual data that demonstrate this.
The obvious incentive to conceal such data is to hide facts that discredit
the public recommendations.

At Burton's June 15 hearing, officials from
the FDA and CDC defended the various conflicts of interest because waivers
were granted. One CDC official went so far as to suggest that it is good
to use vaccine industry insiders on official advisory committees because
they are able to vote based on secret drug-company information! That is
tantamount to letting vaccine industry lobbyists write their own profitable
government mandates, i.e., simply own the process.

It is a great mistake to base vaccine policy
on confidential or trade-secret data. Scientific claims are most reliable
when all data and analyses are subject to public scrutiny. Our political
system demands that government decisions be subject to democratic checks
and balances.

The whole concept of the government forcing
experimental treatment on healthy individuals is disturbing to those who
value freedom. Mandatory vaccine policies depend on overwhelming public
acceptance, but public confidence is eroded by conflicts of interest and
secrecy of deliberations and data.

Government should put all the data, analyses
and meeting minutes on a public website, and this should include a risk-benefit
analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and a comparison against alternate policies.
Only public data and arguments should be considered. The CDC should appoint
advisory committee members with diverse points of view. Scientists from
other fields, consumer advocates, and even vaccine critics would greatly
improve the quality of the recommendations because more policy implications
would be considered.

Who Imposes the Vaccine Mandates?

The December 27, 2000 issue of JAMA (Journal of
the American Medical Association) contains a very important caveat about
who is responsible for the decisions to mandate vaccines, even though the
article supports the widespread policy of forcing all children to be vaccinated
in order to enter daycare or school.

The JAMA article reports on a Centers for Disease
Control (CDC) study that makes the unsurprising claim that unvaccinated
children are more likely to get measles and pertussis than those who are
vaccinated. The study used Colorado data because that is one of 15 states
that allow parents a philosophical (conscientiously held belief) exemption
in addition to the religious and medical exemptions. Only 1.4 percent claimed
this exemption and more than 98% of Colorado children were vaccinated in
the year cited by the study.

Vaccination is not effective in about 5 percent
of children, so when there is a measles outbreak, most of the cases are
among vaccinated children. The CDC has declared that the United States
has been free from indigenous measles since 1998 and the only cases come
in with immigrants.

For the Colorado study, the researchers had
to go back more than ten years to find sufficient cases and include a measles
epidemic. If the researchers wanted to discuss current risks accurately,
they should have focused on immigrants and ineffective vaccinations rather
than on children whom they disdainfully call "exemptors."

It appears that the "experts" and the "authorities"
won't be happy until there is 100% compliance with vaccine mandates. The
real purpose of the JAMA report seems to be to shame or scare the 1 to
2 percent of parents into not using a philosophical exemption and to induce
states to repeal this exemption.

The same issue of JAMA includes an editorial
commenting on this study. It, too, is based on the premise that vaccine
mandates are desirable, and it deplores criticisms of vaccines by parents,
implying that their objections must be based on ignorance or misinformation.

But buried in the JAMA editorial are some startling
comments and revelations. JAMA absolves ACIP, CDC and FDA from any accountability
for the mandating of vaccines in the three-step process described above.
The editorial says, "It is not the responsibility of these advisory bodies
to determine which vaccines are mandated; that decision resides with the
state."

The JAMA editorial issues a warning to state
legislators. They should not mandate a vaccine just because FDA licenses
it or ACIP recommends it; state legislators are responsible to make their
own decisions and cannot pass the buck to FDA, ACIP or CDC, which only
have power to recommend, but not mandate, the vaccines.

Then comes the question, why do ACIP and FDA
so gratuitously put so many vaccines on the "recommended" list for all
children? JAMA's editorial reveals the answer: these recommendations are
monetary decisions masquerading as medical decisions.

Here are JAMA's words: "Since federal funding
for vaccines is determined by the ACIP through the Vaccines for Children
(VFC) program, whenever possible the ACIP should endorse funding for vaccines
that physicians and parents wish to administer." In other words, the real
purpose of ACIP and FDA recommendations is to release federal funds to
buy the vaccines from the manufacturers. Remember that Rep. Dan Burton's
investigation in June 2000 revealed many conflicts of interest among those
who sit on federal panels where they can approve the recommendations that
trigger the federal funds.

JAMA issues a stern caveat to the states: "All
vaccines that are licensed and recommended for use in children should not
necessarily be legally mandated for day care or school entry. Each state
needs to assess each vaccine individually. . . . States should determine
whether the disease to be prevented by the vaccines is highly contagious,
results in significant morbidity and mortality, and poses a major health
problem to both the individual and the community."

It's obvious that those are not the criteria
used by the ACIP and FDA in their pronouncements. Many states are now amending
their compulsory vaccination laws to add hepatitis B and chicken pox. An
independent assessment of these vaccines by a state is unlikely to conclude
that they meet the criteria set forth by JAMA.

Rep. Burton should hold more hearings to expose
the government's vaccine licensing/recommendation/ mandate process. Meanwhile,
since the government's decision-making procedure is not only defective
but suspect, we need a philosophical exemption in every state so that decisions
can be made by parents whose motive is the health of their children, not
promoting government purchases of vaccines.

Independent judgments by states and consumers
might have helped to avoid past blunders like the rotavirus vaccine embarrassment
last year that caused injuries to so many babies. At a minimum, a philosophical
exemption in every state would create a market demand for improvement of
vaccines.

Recall Defective Tires, But Not Vaccines?

A July 18, 2000 hearing of the House Committee
on Government Reform produced evidence about the health dangers from vaccines
containing thimerosal (mercury). Babies who are injected with the vaccines
specified on the Universal Childhood Immunization Schedule, which are typically
delivered in four to six shots during one doctor's visit, may receive 40
times the amount of mercury that is considered safe under Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines.

An independent evaluation conducted by the
National Research Council confirmed the EPA guidelines as accurate, and
the FDA's own website states that "lead, cadmium, and mercury are examples
of elements that are toxic when present at relatively low levels." Credible
testimony was also given regarding the possible relationship between symptoms
of mercury poisoning and the skyrocketing rate of autism, now occurring
in one in 500 children nationwide.

Committee Chairman Dan Burton sent letters
to HHS Secretary Donna Shalala and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
asking for the recall of all thimerosal-containing vaccines. His requests
and those of parents of vaccine-injured children have been ignored. This
is despite the fact that the FDA admits that the vaccines on the Childhood
Immunization Schedule are all available in a thimerosal-free version.

Apparently, the FDA is not planning to recall
any of the 50 thimerosal-containing vaccines but only suggests a "phase
out" over time, thus allowing the pharmaceuticals to unload their defective
merchandise on unsuspecting children. For years to come, these toxic vaccines
will continue to be injected in babies in public health clinics, doctor's
offices, and managed care facilities.

It is unconscionable to continue to put thousands
of babies every day at risk from mercury poisoning, especially when the
government is recommending use of these vaccines and the schools are making
them mandatory, and when safe alternatives are easily available.

Leaving dangerous vaccines on the market so
that the pharmaceuticals can continue to receive revenue from current inventories
(instead of ordering a recall, as happened with tires) seems to be the
pattern. Even after it was known that oral polio and whole-cell pertussis
vaccines caused a higher rate of adverse reactions, clinics and doctors
continued to use their supplies for years rather than pitch them in favor
of safer vaccines. If there is any reason for HHS and FDA to continue to
put thousands of babies at risk from dangerous vaccines other than to protect
the profits of the powerful pharmaceuticals, we'd like to know what that
might be.

Should Schools Force Medical Treatment?

In Utica, NY, parents of 77 middle schoolers were
warned in October 2000 that their children would be taken and turned over
to Child Protective Services for neglect unless they were vaccinated against
hepatitis B within two weeks. There was no emergency, no epidemic of hepatitis
B against which children need to be protected, and no evidence that hepatitis
B is being transmitted at school.

The "emergency" was that the school district
would lose a substantial amount of state funding if students did not comply
with the vaccine mandate. So school district physician Dr. Mark Zongrone,
giving his financial (not medical) diagnosis, said, "We refuse to let that
happen."

How did we get to a circumstance in America
where a school, for its own financial self-interest, imposes medical treatment
on children in opposition to their parents' wishes? Is this America or
Nazi Germany? Hepatitis B is primarily an adult disease spread by multiple
sex partners, drug abusers, and those in occupations where they are exposed
to blood. Unless the child is born to an infected mother, children under
the age of 14 are three times more likely to die or suffer adverse reactions
from the hepatitis B vaccine than from the disease itself.

Parents of two students in separate schools
filed suit on January 24 against the New York City Board of Education,
claiming that it violated state and federal law by refusing to grant religious
exemptions to forced inoculations. New York law requires schoolchildren
to be injected with a long list of various vaccines, but allows both medical
and religious exemptions.

Seventh grader Catherine Rotella refused the
hepatitis B vaccination, asserting a religious exemption. She was sent
to the administrative office and her parents were called to take her home.
After she missed several days, the school demanded an affidavit from the
family's clergy, which Catherine's father obtained. After she returned
to school, two security guards barged into the middle of a class and physically
escorted Catherine to the principal's office where she was denied the religious
exemption and not allowed to return to school without the vaccination.

Second grader Maja Leibovitz was evicted from
school last November 16 because she had not been vaccinated, even though
her parents, Christian Scientists, claimed a religious exemption. The principal
said he would hold Maja back a grade because she was not attending school,
and then called Child Protective Services, claiming that the mother was
guilty of educational neglect for not placing her child in school.

On January 26, a federal court ordered the
New York City Board of Education to allow these two students to return
to school. They were represented by Liberty Counsel of Orlando. Why did
it take a lawsuit to get the school to obey the law?

Can a Court Order Kids to Take Drugs?

Can a judge constitutionally order a controversial
drug to be given to a child over the opposition of his parents? Such action
by a Family Court Judge in Albany, NY has touched off a national debate
pitting public schools and the courts against parental rights.

Seven-year-old Kyle Carroll of Berne, NY, was
diagnosed by a psychologist as having ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity
Disorder) and a physician prescribed the psychotropic drug Ritalin. The
boy soon exhibited two of the drug's common side effects, sleeplessness
and appetite loss. When Kyle's parents told school officials they wanted
to temporarily discontinue the medication, they got a visit from the Albany
County Child Protective Services and a petition to appear in court. The
school district accused the Carrolls of "educational neglect" and they
received what amounted to an order from Judge Gerard E. Maney to start
using Ritalin again.

Under what was described as "at least the theoretical
threat of having their child removed from their custody," the Carrolls
agreed to "an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal (ACOD)." There
was no fact-finding hearing before Judge Maney, no testimony taken, and
no written decision rendered. According to law guardian Pamela J. Joern
of Albany, who supported the school's position, "The consent ACOD directed
the parents to comply with the doctor's treatment regimen, which was a
prescription for Ritalin. They could get a second
opinion, but they couldn't ignore the problem."

In order to avoid a prolonged court battle,
the Carrolls compromised, which is usually what happens when parents are
subjected to intimidation by state child protection agencies. The injustice
of Judge Maney's decision will go unreviewed by higher courts, but the
Kyle Carroll case has kicked up a storm of protest on the internet.

This case underscores the need for better medical
privacy protection in order to safeguard against government intervention
in personal medical decisions. A family's decision whether or not to use
Ritalin is not the government's business. This judicial activism would
never be known outside of the local community if it were not for the flow
of information on the internet.

Ritalin does not treat an objective physical
illness as, for example, insulin treats diabetes. Ritalin is a serious
drug used to control behavior problems and is very attractive to the schools
because it makes the child more likely to shut up, sit down, and do what
he's told. There are some 3.8 million schoolchildren, mostly boys, who
are said to have ADHD, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Estimates are that most of them are on Ritalin or similar psychotropic
drugs.

The number of children labeled ADHD and taking
Ritalin has greatly increased since 1991 when ADHD was covered under the
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a federal program that
brings more funding to public schools in order to provide extra services.
Under IDEA, the school is required to craft an Individualized Education
Plan (IEP) to accommodate each child, which may include drugs prescribed
by a medical doctor, and that's how Kyle happened to be given Ritalin.

All information posted on this web site is
the opinion of the author and is provided for educational purposes only.
It is not to be construed as medical advice. Only a licensed medical doctor
can legally offer medical advice in the United States. Consult the healer
of your choice for medical care and advice.